Free Republic

NEW YORK -- An anonymous tip that nearly landed Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in jail probably wasn't valuable enough to justify a promise of confidentiality, his editor said Tuesday. Speaking at a panel discussion in New York sponsored by Court TV, Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc., lamented that reporters covering Washington have become too quick to offer total anonymity in exchange for information. Confidentiality should be reserved for special circumstances, he said. "A 90-second conversation with the president's spin doctor, who was trying to undermine a whistle-blower, probably didn't deserve confidential source status," Pearlstine said.

Drudge headline. No link yet

Time Inc. editor in chief Norman Pearlstine, who made the controversial choice last summer to turn over the notes of a reporter threatened with jail for refusing to identify a source, is writing a book about anonymous sources. "Off the Record" is scheduled to be published by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday, in 2007. In a decision that brought criticism from his peers in journalism, Pearlstine agreed to comply with a court order to turn over notes by Time reporter Matt Cooper. They were sought by a special federal prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the...

Apparently unappeased by Time Inc.'s offer last week to turn over a reporter's notes related to confidential sources, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald filed tough-language legal papers yesterday arguing that Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper, as well as New York Times reporter Judith Miller, should go to jail for civil contempt. "Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality -- no one in America is," wrote Mr. Fitzgerald, speaking of the reporters' pledge to their sources. Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed by the Bush administration to investigate a government leak that exposed the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame...